Stillbirths - birth and/or death registration search ?

[congletonian]

My cousin has found a newspaper announcement for a stillborn son on 20th September 1864 to the wife of Mr F Andrews of Roxfords (which is the farm's name in Binsted Hampshire ) Is it usual to announce a stillbirth and do we look for birth and death certificates and would the child have been baptised ? The child would have been the brother of our great grandfathers.

Thanks for looking
Liz

[Caroline]

One of our members, Guy, is involved with The Historic Stillbirth Register - more about it on http://www.familytreeforum.com/showt...ight=stillborn

[Felix]

I have a copy of the Historic Stillbirth Register on cd if that's any help to you and you want to search for anything :o

[Elaine ..Spain]

A generous offer Felix.
I have no idea what Ts & Cs are attached to the Register, but might be worth checking that you can openly offer to do lookups, particularly as Guy the "owner" is one of our members!

[congletonian]

Many thanks for that link Caroline. Felix that would be marvellous but as Elaine points out I'll be patient and wait till Guy gives the ok. Thank you for such a kind offer.

Liz

[Felix]

Will do, thanks

[keldon]

Is it usual to announce a stillbirth

There's over 8,000 in the bmd columns for the period 1800-1900 in one newspaper archive. I suppose that could called not usual, but not unusual in the Victorian period.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Not usual to announce it but not unheard of either.

No birth certificate (because the child never lived)
No death certificate (because if you never lived, you cannot die).
No baptism because if you have not lived, you do not have a soul.

However, baptism, or something like it, was sometimes performed out of kindness to the parents. I don't think this was formally recorded though.

Since 1927, a civil Stillbirth register has existed, kept by the GRO. This is not accessible by the general public and you have to be a parent or next of kin to get an extract from it, at the discretion of the Registrar General.

OC

[Guy]

I have no qualms about a person providing information from the Historic Stillbirth register in response to a specific inquiry, but I would ask that no one offers to do look-ups from the CD.

The reason for this is very simple, at present I have to purchase registers and other research sources to compile data for the stillbirth register; this due to the often low numbers of stillbirths per register or source can be quite an expense, the sale of the CDs helps towards that expense.

In addition I am very grateful to the individuals who contribute or have contributed transcripts of stillbirths they have come across.

My intention is to eventually make the Historic Stillbirth Register available online free of charge as a lasting memorial to all those infants recorded and unrecorded who did not survive but there still remains a huge amount of effort before this can be a feasible reality.

In the meantime I have supplied free copies of the Historic Stillbirth Register to a number of individuals who are active in the field of counselling mothers of stillborn infants. The fact of its existence is a sign that those infants are not forgotten by society but are being acknowledged in a small way.
Cheers
Guy

[congletonian]

Thank you Guy
I quite understand and wish you well in your project. I hope I'm still researching when the register becomes available online !

Best wishes

Liz